The Peoples Democratic Party, it would seem, has finally come to the realisation that it is no more the giant it thought it was just a few months ago. From the initial arrogant posture that it is the only truly democratic party in Nigeria with membership across the length and breadth of the country, a position that it thought had guaranteed its continuous dominance of Nigeria’s politics for the next 6o years, it has now come to the awareness that for 16 years it misruled Nigeria and deservedly lost the trust of the voters.
Nobody could have put it better than the Chairman of the party’s Reconciliation Committee, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi, who at a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 ahead of the party’s National Conference admitted that his party has failed the nation.
Like someone just coming out of a deep slumber, he formally admitted to what every other sane Nigerian already knew that his party, the PDP, misruled Nigeria.
In his thinking, the PDP made a “fundamental mistake” for not allowing the North to complete its term within the context of their own zoning arrangement. I think the real fundamental mistake which the party made was to have taken Nigerians for a ride. The PDP did not reckon with the ability of the ordinary Nigerians to see through the monumental deceit, corruption and lack of democratic spirit in their conduct of government business.
There is no doubt that it initially enjoyed national spread in the composition of its leadership but it is equally true that the so-called “national spread” has more to do with the fact that there is no part of the country where we didn’t have corrupt men and women especially those who evilly profited from the long military dictatorship as apologists, associates, cronies and fronts.
The party was largely peopled by those who benefited from the evil military dictatorship. It did not have many genuine pro-democracy activists whose bitter struggle accelerated the demise of the military dictatorship within its ranks and like I have always argued, there was hardly anyone within the top echelons of the PDP at inception that was not contaminated by his or her active collaboration with the military dictatorship. Their choice of General Obasanjo as the first president to inaugurate the inchoate civilian democracy was a continuation of their militarised perception of national politics. To be candid, if the military did not trust someone in 1998, there was no chance of him or her getting nominated into any position of importance within the PDP system. So much for national spread.
Therefore, the fundamental mistake which the party made and to which it has not yet alluded to in Dokpesi’s confessional statement was to have deceived Nigerians into believing that they were democrats when indeed they were the extended arms of a retreating military from the politics of Nigeria. Whether or not there was internal democracy within it was a matter for the members of the party to deal with. It was always my view that the party was at liberty to choose whoever they wanted as candidate for the election but they should be prepared for the consequences of their choice. When a political party, out of naked arrogance, deliberately alienated so many people by its own lack of internal democracy, it should have known that under any truly fair and democratically conducted election that it was going to lose badly.
So their foolishness in picking President Goodluck Jonathan as candidate against zoning, political justice and fairness to the North led to its total loss of support in that part of the country. People like Chief Edwin Clark manifested such degree of insensitivity to the rights and feeling of others in such ways that would naturally alienate even the most ardent supporters.
The 16 years that the party stayed in power are similar to the biblical years of the locust. It was wasted. The party had ample opportunity to remedy its affairs but it refused and went ahead arrogantly on the illusion that Nigerians are fools who cannot tell when they were being taken for a ride. That is why I couldn’t figure out the purpose of the unreserved apology that Dokpesi, the AITmogul, was belatedly offering.
The PDP has a lot to apologise for. It would also have to apologise not only to Nigerians but to the whole of the democratic world for willfully counterfeiting the idea of democracy. The last primaries conducted by the party were the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I recall making the following observations about the recklessness of that process on this same page:
A great number of observers have labelled the unfolding development within the PDP as “lack of internal democracy”. I think it is more of disguised autocracy than anything else. When a party uses its internal machinery to subvert and undermine the popular will of the voters by presenting to them not those they would have loved to represent them, what follows is a rape of democracy eventually giving birth to counterfeit governments – an effective ‘state capture’ by those who do not wish the nation well.
“I am aware of a situation where the octogenarian Chairman of the BOT of the party swore that a particular candidate must not be voted for at the primaries no matter his popularity. He even went further to threaten that if at the end they still stubbornly vote for the particular candidate he would make sure the result is annulled. A party that harbours such a fascist personality has forfeited the right to claim to be democratic
I foresee several internally generated crises – implosion — within the parties in no time and there shall inevitably be inconsolable wailing and gnashing of teeth in the face of the pending domestic rebellions against overbearing political tsars who are presently busy messing up the process because you may force a horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink. There shall be protest voting galore and it may not mean well for those who have been playing God recently. Mark my word.”
It is remarkable that less than a year of making the above observations, the party is already gnashing its teeth as the recent “unreserved apology” of Dokpesi tells the whole story. I warned them that it was suicidal arrogance to have let go, in one fell swoop, six serving state governors; saw its former two-term president shred his membership card on TV or allowed people like Fani-Kayode and Clark to be driving a supposedly convincing campaign. I warned that it was akin to the man who, for “fear of death committed suicide.” The PDP needs to repent of its sins against the nation. A mere one-time apology may not be enough.
PUNCH
END
…..a mere one time apology may not be enough.